


Good Luck Kisses

by icouldnotsee (herprettysleeper)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Friendship to Lovers, Sweet Steve Rogers, sorry but he's so wonderful just kill me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-10-07 23:33:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10372317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/herprettysleeper/pseuds/icouldnotsee
Summary: In which a tradition becomes a lifeline.





	

The kisses don’t mean anything.

They’re just sweet nothings, same as words of useless encouragement. They aren’t sexual or romantic—they’re just ritual.

Before a mission, Y/N kisses Steve, a fast touch of lips. For luck. It’s been like that for nearly all the time he’s been working for SHIELD.

They’ve tried dating before, but it never felt right. No shared experience. She worked, still works in intelligence, and he’s always been a soldier. But even though the romance hadn’t lasted, the friendship had, and it ran deep.

The first time since his rehabilitation he’d gone on a mission, she’d grabbed the neck of his uniform and pulled him down to her, leaving a sweet kiss on his lips. She smiled softly. “Good luck.” And he’d known it wasn’t anything but friendly, because they weren’t anything but friendly.

He’d smiled at her and said, “I’ll need it,” before joining up with the rest of the team to take down whoever else had decided to screw with his country yet again.

She’d smiled and turned back to her work, and he’d run out to jump the helicraft he should already have been on.

~*~

“So we’ve done Star Wars, we’ve done Star Trek, we’ve done all the history you missed under the ice, we’ve done all the good books you missed under the ice, we’ve done crap TV I’m glad you missed while you were under the ice…is there anything else that matters?”

Steve chuckles as Y/N leans into him. He has a weekend off this time, and she’s decided that he has too much to catch up on. It’s Sunday. It’s bright outside, sunlight pouring in through the open windows. They fell asleep on the floor here, and the blankets are curled up underneath them, because she tosses around in her sleep and bunches up the covers between her hands. It’s cute.

She pulls one of the blankets up so it covers them up to their waists, still flipping through movies, and then she shakes her head. “It’s going to take you years to get through all these movies.”

“They can’t all be life-changing.”

“Take that back _immediately._ ”

“No.”

“Wow. _Wow._ ”

He’s indignant. “What?”

“I can’t even believe we’re friends.”

“I’ve learned from the 21st century that people use the phrase ‘I can’t even’ more than they should,” he supplements. “And it’s really obnoxious.”

She punches him lightly on the arm before getting up to get something to eat, then throws over her shoulder, “You love me.”

He scoffs—she throws a dishtowel at him. It lands on his face because he was unguarded. She makes him unguarded.

“This is why we’re friends, by the way.”

~*~

“Are you two together?” Sharon asks.

Steve makes a long “pft” sound. “Me and Y/N?”

Sharon seems unsure, then nods. “Yeah, you seem, close.”

The party that Tony’s thrown is crowded, and he’s entertaining guests at the other end of the room. Steve feels alone and claustrophobic at once. He looks around till he locates Y/N, who’s leaning against the wall. Two of her friends are talking to her, and she throws her head back in laughter, and it makes him smile a bit.

“You’re together, then?” Sharon says, and Steve blinks back into the small reality he’s confined to.

At some point, he’s looking at Y/N again, and she sees him, smiles and waves.

He shakes his head. “No, we’re not.”

~*~

Hydra’s growing inside SHIELD.

He learns about it with Natasha standing near him, and the computerized brain of a Nazi scientist surrounding him.

Which means, no one’s to be trusted.

Except, he knows who he trusts. Natasha, because there’s no way _she’d_ work for Hydra. He knows Fury’s on his side no matter how much Steve disagrees with him. And Y/N. Y/N isn’t Hydra, because it doesn’t fit with her. It doesn’t fit her strength or her kindness.

Her voice comes in through his earpiece. “Steve, Nat, get out. _Get the hell out of there._ ”

“Hydra’s–”

“I know, and you can worry about all of that when you’re not being blown up. Both of y'all, _run._ ”

Her advice comes a few seconds too late, so he grabs Nat and scans for a way out.

They make it.

When they finally meet up with Y/N again, she runs to him and kisses him, then pulls back, scanning his face for injury, sighing when she finds nothing visible. “You okay?” she asks to verify.

He smiles—she’s here. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

~*~

Steve never thought it’d come to this.

He’s standing in the middle of the end of the world, and there’s a crack spreading through the Earth that civilians are tumbling into, and he can’t see them all.

Y/N saved him the first time, last minute bailing him out of a quick death between ten trucks. He’s grabbed onto the edge of the helicraft, and she’d slowed down so he could climb in. Right now, she’s slowly guiding them away from the city, to safety.

“No,” he says, walking over to where she’s sitting and working the controls. “You gotta send me back.”

“I’m not going to drop you into your death,” she says, and doesn’t look back at him. He takes a deep breath.

“Y/N.”

“Don’t patronize me.” She keeps guiding them away.

“Please.”

She closes her eyes and exhales. “I hate you.”

“You don’t.”

She still won’t look at him, but the craft is turning around and lowering back over the city. “I hate you so much.” There are tears slowly making their way down her face. “Just so you know.”

He’s got maybe a minute before he’s got to jump out, so he kneels down and kisses the top of her head. “I’ll see you soon.”

The door out of the carrier slowly slides open, and she says, “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

He doesn’t respond.

She turns so that she’s facing him, and he leans down to meet her. They kiss softly, and he wishes that he could be normal, and that it wasn’t an average thing for him to fight AIs gone rogue so that he could just stay somewhere safe with her. No man-made monsters. Just them.

“Goodbye, stranger,” she whispers against his lips.

He doesn’t know what to say back, so Steve presses back against her, pulls her in closer to him. This is going to be their last kiss, unless he can do something about it.

When he pulls away from her, before letting go, he grips her hand. “I’ll see you soon.”

He knows she’s watching him leave, so he jumps out of the carrier and doesn’t look back.

~*~

It takes him a week to get home.

He’s supposed to be going into hiding while the world calms down, but he can’t. He lays low only when he has to, but it still takes seven days to circle back to New York.

He knocks on the door to the apartment and thinks about how anti-climatic it’ll be if she isn’t here after everything–

She opens the door.

“Hi,” he says with a small smile.

Her eyes are wide. “You—you disappeared,” she says. “And you didn’t call or text or email, and you didn’t even send a goddamned letter, and all you have to say is _'Hi’?_ ”

He drags his feet against the carpet and looks up at her.

“I hate you so much,” she says, and the weight leaves his stomach, because they’re still okay. She still wants him around.

She throws her arms around his frame and squeezes him so tight that it hurts, but the pain is okay. She pulls back, scans him over and says, “Are you good?”

“Yeah. Are we good?”

“Yes.”

They look at each other for a while, until Steve says, “Well, maybe I should–”

She mutters under her breath, “for god’s sake,” and presses her lips to his.

He’s caught off guard—she always catches him off his guard—but he relaxes into it, enjoys it.

When it’s over, he says, “Are we together?”

She thinks it over. “We could try. Think it’ll work?”

He looks at her, really looks at her, his best friend and everything that he’s needed since he woke up in a place 75 years too new for him. “I think it will.”

The corner of her lip tilts up. “Then let’s try.”


End file.
